The Game Is Afoot

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Month: April 2018

Times have changed, certainly, but lest we forget those who once stood poised by their megaphones, ready to lead a spirited locomotive cheer, let’s remember, shall we, the men of cheer..

Yes, mascots slam dunking off trampolines are among the more amusing spectacles available at halftime, and, yes, the national cheerleading championship broadcast from Disney World does feature impressive pyramid building and endless tossing of small girls into the stratosphere, but doesn’t it all feel contrived, really?

Fired Up and Bring It On took us inside that heartless world of cheer competition, but like the Disney version of cheering, school spirit seems secondary if mentioned at all. Satan’s Cheerleaders expanded the scope of the genre, but again, was much more about a secondary issue (sacrificing virgins) than rooting a team to glory. Apparently cheering as cheering lost traction somewhere along the way.

I suppose a modern cheer take on the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “Hey-let’s-paint-the-old-barn-and-put-on-a-show” montage would present the moment in which the college’s notably mousy librarian jumps from the bleachers as the final minute ticks down, the home team scores, she drops her specs, strips off her cardigan sweater, displays the college’s colors, and leads the crowd in a furious snake dance around the goal posts. I suppose she could as easily mug the opposing team’s mascot, toss an overweight bobcat to the ground and plant the school’s flag somewhere near its nether bits. Or not.

Back to the locomotive, a cheer rarely heard on the sidelines these days. It’s simplicity itself; fans simply follow the leaders in spelling the school’s name, deliberately at first, gathering steam as the cheer is repeated – like a locomotive – get it? Not too tough on the sidelines at Yale, a bit more challenging at Susquehanna. Simple, perhaps, but the energy behind the cheer comes from the urging of cheerleaders, men in letter sweaters virtually foaming at the mouth as the cheer grown in intensity. Toss away any misconception you might have about the popularity of male cheerleaders in the day; these guys were BMOC, Aces,Keen. Mr.Charisma grabbed a microphone, threw his shoulders back, and tossed out the first word. That was enough. That’s all it took.

In the 1880’s Princeton’s lads developed what would come to be known as the skyrocket cheer –

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Tiger. Sis, Boom. Bah Princeton!

In Austen, in 1892, eager Longhorns “borrowed” a cheer in use at Philips Academy Exeter (NH), a school known as PEA:

OK, that was fine as far as it went, but some colleges brought a higher level of erudition to the field. Imagine if you will the Britons of Albion College rousing the crowd in 1884 as Olivet came to town:

Io Triumphe! Io Triumphe!

Haben, swaben, rebecca le animore

Whoopy, whoopty, shellerdy veridy;

Broomdy, Ralldy, eyedy pa

Honeka, heneka, wack-a wacka;

Hob, bob, boldibara, boldibara,

Con slomaday, hob, dab, rah!

Albion! RAH!

Occidental borrowed that one wholesale, and others traveled equally well, as did this gem from Mercer University in Georgia.

Even more institutionally specific is the cheer used by years by the fun-loving pranksters at Cal Tech:

Cosine, tangent, secant, sine

Logarithm, logarithm, hyperbolic sign,

3-point-1-4-1-5-9

slide rule, slide rule

Tech, Tech, Tech.

Fun is fun, but every once in a while a college has to step up and celebrate its core values, as is done on the sideline at Indiana’s Earlham College, one of the nation’s most Quakerly of Friends colleges:

For years, Earlham’s mascot was “Mr. Quaker”, a portly figure the virtual twin of the character shilling for Quaker Oats. Today, however, that bastion of Quakerism has become, “Big Earl”, a fearsome if highly principled avatar.

Who WERE these guys, these captains of cheer squads? Here are but a few: George W. Bush (Head Cheerleader at Andover), Jimmy Stewart (Head Cheerleader at Princeton), Dwight D. Eisenhower (Varsity football star who cheered while injured), Franklin D. Roosevelt (Harvard Cheerleader). What’s changed over the years? Somehow this activity, once entirely controlled by men was transformed, sometime in the 1950’s as pom poms began to replace megaphones. The ranks of women who once cheered is perhaps even more celebrated (Halle Berry, Vanna White, Sandra Bullock, Madonna …. and … Ruth Bader-Ginsburg).

The NFL Draft captures the attention of 45 MILLION viewers, draws more than 70,000 people who attend in person, lasts for three days, and occupies the hearts and minds of the nation’s most erudite students of sports from the moment the Eagles hoisted the Lombardi Trophy to the moment Roger Goodell chuffs into the microphone to kick off the festivities.

Let’s think about this for a moment … starting with the 45 MILLION, many of whom admittedly start out watching the draft but fall away somewhere around hour five. Still, that’s an extraordinary number of people watching what is essentially football bingo. Just to provide some perspective, slightly more than 18 million tuned in to see the Astros defeat the Dodgers in the last game of the World Series, the Cavs and Warriors averaged about 20 million last season, fewer fans than watched the year before, when the Cavs took the championship, almost 8 million follow professional bowling, and a mere 2.4 million ponied up $100.00 apiece to watch Floyd Mayweather fight Manny Pacquiao.

There are some interesting questions in any draft season, as there are this year. Premium quarterbacks establish the success of a franchise and there is some doubt that this year’s crop has the goods. The top four or five this season are decidedly less promising than some in other years, but, hey, someone has to take them, and at least two will go in the first round if not in the first five picks. Case in point -Josh Rosen. Jim Mora, controversial former coach at UCLA, tossed Rosen, one of the top two quarterbacks in the draft and his former QB, under a bus by suggesting that as a privileged intellectual millennial, his passion for the game has to be questioned. Rosen may not be a tough-town quarterback like Johnny Unitas or Brett Favre, but the NFL has welcomed a host of qbs from snappy backgrounds, all of whom could be modeling for Ralph Lauren in the off-season. If the charge is that Rosen is too smart to stay interested in football, which is what Mora seems to have charged, the best quarterbacks on the field right now would be Chris Leak, now in the CFL, or Terrelle Pryor, both of whom had single digit scores on the Wonderlic test.

So that’s interesting.

Then there’s Saquon Barkley. Barkley, Penn State’s running back extraordinaire, is a true freak of nature and the most exciting football phenom since Barry Sanders. Picking up almost 4000 yards and 43 touchdowns is noteworthy, but anyone who saw Barkley play knows that this guy can bust into daylight with or without an opening. Rumor has it that Penn State really only had two running plays, which, if you have a Saquon Barkley, is really all you need. This year’s hot question is whether an NFL franchise will use a top pick on Barkley, knowing the half-life of running backs is about two years and remembering that in the last two seasons top running backs came from the middle of the draft. Several teams could conceivably pass on the most talented athlete in the draft.

So that’s interesting.

In red-hot franchise news, The Cleveland Browns,perennial doormats of the league, have a bunch of nifty picks and could conceivably jump-start a franchise that has been mired in misery. The NY Football Giants face the inevitable replacement of Eli Manning and may chose to use their highest pick to land one of those three quarterbacks of questionable value. Do the Giants take a last shot at a playoff with Manning or shoot the moon for the next franchise qb? How many quarterbacks do the Broncos need this year? The Jets … ’nuff said. The Cards have a plan to keep Sam Bradford on the field for 16 games next season; it involves adamantium and homeopathic treatments in which his knees and ankles will be routinely hit with soft mallets. Oh, so they could need to draft as well.

That’s pretty much it, so one wonders what will draw the millions to the event once again. It’s been a while since the end of the football season, but colleges will be playing their spring games at about the same time, the NBA and NHL are starting to shape up the playoff slots, and baseball is in full swing (as it were). Any excuse for a party? Makes sense, at least on the sports bar and giant tv screen level.

This may be mere cynicism, or more likely the annual squealing of a fan whose franchise will be drafting nothing but interior linemen, but I suggest that the draft allows us, the uninitiated and unpaid fans, the luxury of second-guessing the analytics guys, the scouts, the coaches, the trainers, and team doctors. I’ve already mentioned the Browns once; their draft history is so appalling that any of us could certainly have done a better job. Will they self-destruct again this year? 45 Million people will be tuning in to watch it happen. Want to make a football junkie drool in anticipation of juicy controversy? Just trot out the list of top draft quarterback flops; it’s a catnip canape for fans of all ages.

There are more serious issues to be considered in these parlous times; perhaps brains could be employed in service to other more pressing humanitarian efforts, but, no. Apparently we will once again clamor to see young men, only recently mud spattered and bloody, striding to the stage in thousand dollar suits to shake Commissar Goodell’s hand, jam on the ill-fitting team cap so that ears are flattened and spread, and flap a Cleveland Browns jersey with feigned glee.

If only there were some mechanism that allowed us to check the results with a quick scan of a screen, say, or even on the phone we carry in our pockets. It’s essential, of course, to have the results in real-time as there are only three months between the draft and the first exhibition games. I suppose we’ll all just have to settle in for the three-day marathon.marathon starting on April 26th.

Meat. Cold Beer. Home Runs. Prime Man Cave fare. Fans like to see people HIT things. If we wanted hours of static posing on pristine fields of grass, we’d watch soccer.

The 1927 Yankees boasted a lineup so daunting that their first six hitters (Earl Combs, Mark Koenig, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel, and Tony Lazzeri) made up a “Murderer’s Row”, six batters no pitcher could face without peril. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig still live in baseball legend; Ruth hit 60 home runs that year, and Gehrig drove in 173 runs, besting Ruth’s record of 168 in 1921. Combs’ batting average was .356 that year, Meusel’s .337, Lazzeri drove in 102 runs, and Koenig picked up 150 hits and scored 99 runs, including one from third base as Ruth pounded his 60th homer. The Yankees won 110 games that year and 101 the next, when a schedule included 154 games.

This comes to mind as the Yankees welcome Giancarlo Stanton to a lineup that already presented considerable slugging power. This year’s version of a murderer’s row will include DH Brett Gardner (21 home runs, .350 OBP) as leadoff, followed by Aaron Judge (52 home runs), .420 OBP), Giancarlo Stanton (59 home runs, .376 OBP), Gary Sanchez (33 home runs, .345 OBP), Aaron Hicks (15 home runs, .372 OBP), Didi Gregorius (25 home runs, .318 OBP). The strategy allows Judge, Stanton, and Sanchez maximum opportunities to hit and allows fans to dream of 111 or more home runs again between Judge and Stanton alone.

And that’s exciting. And about time, as baseball comes under intense scrutiny from those who find it hard to market the game.

Is this an era of great pitching? Yup, and only baseball purists tune in to watch a 1-1 pitcher’s duel. Are fielders more impressively acrobatic? Yup, and we’ll catch those web gems on ESPN at eleven.

Meat. Cold Beer. Home Runs. Prime Man Cave fare. Fans like to see people HIT things.

If we wanted hours of static posing on pristine fields of grass, we’d watch soccer. So, yes, booming bats is a good thing for baseball right now.

There have been some impressively stacked lineups that have tallied some large numbers over the decades, and not they have not always been the Yankees. A few curiosities have emerged, teams with power that did not establish dynasties, but which captured the imagination of their era.

The Tigers in the 1930’s, for example, had Hank Greenberg, known as Hammerin’ Hank, also as “The Hammering Hebrew”, a sobriquet unlikely to be found today. Greenberg had refused to play on Rosh Hashanah at the end of the 1934 season, causing beleaguered Tiger fans to moan, “Rosh Hashanah comes every year, but the Tigers haven’t won the pennant since 1909.” Greenberg was a gentle monster whose 58 home runs in 1938 stood as second only to Ruth until Roger Maris set the new mark of 61 in 1961. The Tigers lineup was impressive, not quite a row of murderers, but not bad. Greenberg batted second behind Rudy York, a .275 career hitter who played catcher that year and first base for most of his career. York was one eighth Cherokee, a fact which allowed one insensitive newsman to describe him as, “part Indian and part first baseman.” Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer, the Tiger’s exceptional second baseman, batted third, Known as “The Mechanical Man,” Gehringer put together seven seasons with more than 200 hits, ending up with a career batting average of .320. After Gehringer, the lineup trailed off considerably. Dixie Walker, passing through Detroit on his way to the Dodgers that year hit for average but not for power.

Similarly, The Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Red Sox saw Jimmy Foxx sock 534 home runs in his career, 58 of which came in 1932 with the Athletics. Foxx was the youngest to reach the 500 home run mark until Yankee, Alex Rodriguez, swept past him in 2007. Foxx was a physical specimen of some reputation; “He has muscles in his hair,” quoth Lefty Gomez. The A’s lineup included leadoff second baseman Max Bishop, a .270 hitter, George William “Mule” Haas, an outfielder batting close to .300, Mickey Cochran, catcher after whom Mickey Mantle was named, a .320 Hall of Fame hitter, and Al Simmons, “Bucketfoot Al”, whose performance in 1931 won him a second successive batting title, .390 with 25 home runs. The A’s led the league for three years, winning two World Series Championships, but the Athletics sold Simmons to the White Sox on 1932, and retreated back to the ranks of ordinary, very good teams.

The oft-discounted Chicago Cubs trotted out one of the most dynamic duos from 1929 to 1932 when slugger Hack Wilson was joined by Rogers Hornsby, perhaps the most successful pure hitter of all time. Hornsby finished his career with a lifetime batting average of .358, second only to Ty Cobb who was far from elegant, a slap hitter who bullied pitchers into giving him a ball he could hit. In 1924 with the St. Louis Cardinals, Hornsby batted .424, still the highest seasonal batting average in the modern era. He was the only player ever to hit 40 home runs and bat over .400. Cubs fans know that Hornsby still holds the record for the Cubs’ highest batting average (.390) and for runs scored (156). Hack Wilson was a wild man, frequently arrested for what were called his “festivities”. He alleged that he never played drunk, but he did scramble into the box seats to fight a spectator who had been heckling him. Despite his personal foibles, and despite his curious physique (5’6, 195 pounds with an 18 inch neck), Wilson could hit the ball a mile. In 1930 he hit 56 home runs, batted .356, and drove in a record setting 191 runs. The only players who approach Wilson inhis day were Lou Gehrig (184) and Hank Greenberg (183). Joe DiMaggio hit 167 for the Yankees in 1937 and Manny Ramirez punched out 165 for the Cleveland Indians in 1999. Wilson’s record, like DiMaggio’s hitting streak and Johnny Vander Meer’s consecutive no-hit games, has been considered untouchable.

It’s not easy to find contemporary lineups with comparable power. Individuals, yes. Teams, not so much.

Hank Aaron was baseball’s all-time home run king (755 home runs) until Barry Bonds crept past him with 762. Unlike Bonds, who hit 73 home runs in 2001, the current single-season record, Aaron never had a 50 home run season. Neither Aaron or Bonds were surrounded by power. In that 2001 season, the Giants next best hitters were Jeff Kent (.298/ 22 home runs) and Rich Aurelia (.324/37 home runs). In Aaron’s MVP season, 1957, the Braves lineup included Eddie Mathews, a hard hitting third baseman who would end up with a total of 522 home runs but who hit 32 that year. Wes Covington was the third most potent batter, driving in 65 runs. The Braves pitching was spectacular, but this was no murderer’s row.

Willie Mays, 5th on the all time home run tally with 666, won the MVP with the Giants in 1955, hitting 51 home runs. Mays is among the most complete players in the history of the game, but his Giants were a relatively underpowered team; next on the roster in 1955 was Hank Thompson with 17 dingers. In later years, the SF GIants added Willie McCovey to the lineup, but by that time Mays was hitting fewer than 20 homers a year. In 1998 when Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’ record of 61 home runs by knocking 70 into outer space, the next most threatening Cardinal batter was Ray Lankford, who hit 37 home runs and drive in 105 runs.

So, murderers not lining up in rows in recent years? Actually, two modest candidates emerged in the 1990’s: The Seattle Mariners and the Cleveland Indians.

The 1998 Mariners had considerable pop as Ken Griffey, Jr. hit 56 home runs and Alex Rodriguez knocked out 42. Griffey had 146 rbis and Rodriguez 124. DH Edgar Martinez hit .322 that season and popped 29 home runs. Griffey and A-Rod would leave the Mariners, but the 2001 Mariners won 116 games, 59 of which were won by more than four runs. 2001 was Ichiro Suzuki’s first year in MLB, obviously NOT a year of adjustment as he hit.350 that season. Other batters hitting over .300 included John Olerud, Brett Boone, and Edgar Martinez. The home run count was down that season, but Boone, Mike Cameron, and Martinez each drove in more than a 100 runs.

The 1995 Indians lead the majors in virtually every offensive statistic – runs scored, hits, home runs, slugging percentage, batting average, runs batted in, fewest strikeouts. The entire lineup may not seem that formidable, but the consistent strength in the middle of the order sets this team apart: Jim Thome, .314/ 25 home runs, Omar Vizquel, .266/ 56 rbis, Albert Belle, .317/ 50 home runs / 126 rbis, Kenny Lofton, .310 / 53 rbis, Manny Ramirez, .308/ 31 home runs / 107 rbis, Eddie Murray, .323 / 21 home runs. That Indian team won its division by 30 games over the Kansas City Royals, swept the Red Sox in three games, and defeated the Mariners in the American League Championship. The Indians lost to the Braves in the World Series, but few in the American League forgot that Indians lineup.

I write this piece in early April. Hicks is out for more than a month, Judge has one home run and Stanton three. Not murder yet. On the other hand, out on the west coast, Mike Trout has hit two for the Angels, and pitcher/hitter Shohei Ohtani also has two home runs as well and is 1-0 from the mound. The Nat’s Bryce Harper has already hit four home runs and the Astros’ Jose Altuve is hitting .414.